Wendy J. Murphy: Casey Anthony trial an exercise in absurdity

Recently dubbed the “trial of the century,” the prosecution of Florida mom Casey for the murder of her toddler daughter, Caylee Anthony, could more aptly be called the “trial of the absurd.”

Wendy J. Murphy

Recently dubbed the “trial of the century,” the prosecution of Florida mom Casey Anthony for the murder of her toddler daughter, Caylee Anthony, could more aptly be called the “trial of the absurd.”

The prosecution seems desperate to prove Casey’s innocence while the defense can’t manage a single reference to the evidence that actually proves she did not kill her child.

Casey knows more than she’s saying about why Caylee is dead, which is why she was offered immunity early on. The prosecution squeezed her very hard, even putting the death penalty on the table, but she resisted, and the prosecution all but conceded defeat last week when they rested their case after presenting a woefully small pile of evidence.

There’s no doubt Casey neglected her child, lied a lot and failed to report Caylee was missing for a month, but there's good evidence she wasn't even with Caylee when she died.

Caylee was last seen with Casey leaving the home of George and Cindy Anthony, Casey’s parents, on June 16, 2008. The public thinks Casey drugged Caylee, put her in her car trunk and taped her mouth shut so she could go out partying. But Casey and her boyfriend rented movies the night of the 16th and stayed home. Videotape from Blockbuster showed that Caylee was nowhere in sight.

Wherever Caylee was, she didn’t die on the 16th because her remains were found with pink and white shorts and a T-shirt –– not the jean skirt and solid pink top she'd been wearing when she was last seen.

Whoever killed Caylee apparently had Casey’s car, too, because Casey didn’t have her child or her car on June 17. A witness told police Casey was driving a borrowed Jeep that day, and a neighbor saw Casey's car, but not Casey, backing into Cindy and George's garage on the 17th.

Why? Did someone take heart-shaped stickers from Casey’s room to bury with the body to implicate Casey in the killing? Casey’s brother, Lee, testified that Caylee was killed to teach Casey a lesson. Why?

Casey had her car again on June 22. She told a friend on the June 25 that she’d been smelling a dead animal in the car. She abandoned the car in a public parking lot on the 27th and asked a witness to pick her up. All this is additional proof Casey did not kill her child because even the dimmest murderer knows better than to invite a witness to the crime scene and talk openly about the victim’s rotting flesh.

The prosecution’s case raised more questions than it answered, and it failed to address the following important issues:

1. Photographs of Caylee seized from the Anthony home have been sealed from public view by court order as “too prejudicial”. The images are apparently so awful Casey's attorney made a very big fuss about her mother, Cindy, answering deposition questions about the factthat the photos exist. Why?

2. A search warrant executed on Casey's computer is also under seal. Why? The warrant for the Anthony home is available to the public. Why not the one for the computer?

3. In May and June of ‘08, when Caylee was sleeping with Casey at a friend’s apartment, Casey got a phone call in the middle of the night, in response to which, she roused Caylee from sleep and delivered her to some unknown location. Then she returned to her friend’s apartment and went to sleep. Casey also delivered Caylee to unknown locations on other occasions when she claimed to be bringing Caylee to a “nanny.” Where did she bring her? Why?

4. Why is the docket sheet in the case under seal? It would show what motions were filed to “seal” certain evidence. It would also show that the case has been designated a sex-crime prosecution, which is important given that a sex-crime detective was involved in the early stages of the investigation. Why?

5. Casey searched the Internet to learn how to make chloroform, a substance commonly used to sedate children in the making of child porn. The public thinks Casey used chloroform to kill her child, but the drug is popular among parents who pimp their kids because it’s cheap, and it causes amnesia so victims can’t remember being abused.

Pimping kids is dangerous business, and Casey apparently made someone very angry. Maybe she cut out an earlier “business” partner or ripped someone off. A “Zenaida Gonzales” reported her laptop stolen in early June.

The distortion of truth in this strange case will lead to Casey’s acquittal, which begs the real question: Will the prosecution then have the guts and the political will to file new charges against Casey for what she REALLY did to that poor little girl.

Wendy Murphy is a leading victims’ rights advocate and nationally recognized television legal analyst. She is an adjunct professor at New England Law in Boston. She can be reached at wmurphy@nesl.edu.